What is Growing Readers?
Growing Readers is a literacy professional learning grant designed and implemented through Georgia’s 16 Regional Educational Service Agencies (RESAs) and administered through the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement and the Georgia Department of Education.
Growing Readers recognizes that effective professional learning is collaborative, ongoing, and embedded in practice. The two-year initiative engages teachers in both offsite professional learning sessions and onsite coaching support through rounds. Growing Readers coaches partner with teachers to experiment with new practices and refine reading instruction together.
Project Benefits
Professional learning
Engages teachers in offsite professional learning twice per year, two consecutive days per session.
One-on-one support
Engages teachers in onsite support and coaching a minimum of 12 contacts per year, per teacher.
Supporting resources
Provides professional texts, classroom library texts, and other resources to teachers. (Grant participants only).
Implementation
support
Provides implementation support to administrators.
Progress
measurement
Measures progress of students three times per year.
Project Goals
Teaching skills
Empower teachers with knowledge, skills, and confidence for teaching reading.
Reading proficiency
Increase the number of children reading proficiently.
Professional learning
Provide high-quality professional learning through offsite training and onsite coaching and support.
Project Effectiveness
From inception, Growing Readers has been evaluated by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement for project effectiveness. The evaluation of Growing Readers focuses on four areas: implementation consistency, teacher practice, RESA cohesiveness and collaboration, and student outcomes. For each of the four evaluation areas, GOSA’s Research and Evaluation Team has created monitoring tools and protocols. The findings each year are used to revise and refine the professional learning system. See our evaluation from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.
Foundational Beliefs
Science informs what and how we teach. The science of reading is an interdisciplinary body of research that is ever changing and self-correcting. The art of teaching reading is designing and matching instruction to each individual reader. Teaching reading is both a science and an art.
Research has demonstrated that reading is a complex process. Proficient readers independently apply behaviors and skills of phonological awareness (phonemic awareness included), phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In addition, proficient readers are motivated and engaged, are strategic, and deploy executive function skills to manage the reading process.
All components of reading should be systematically and explicitly taught and practiced in a variety of texts. The goal of reading instruction is to develop skilled, independent readers.
Project Reach
With more than 20 years of involvement in the education field, our team adopts an individualized strategy to each student.
Rely on our expertise and commitment to offering superior educational services.
100+
Counties & school systems
38
Growing Readers Specialists
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